Sunrise — 7:11.

"In 1976, Ronald Reagan challenged a sitting president, Gerald Ford, and four years later Jerry Brown did the same against Jimmy Carter."

"Both incumbents would lose the general election, as would George H.W. Bush in 1992, the last year a president would face a remotely serious primary. This fear of wounding your own president and only ensuring his defeat in the fall is partly the reason why primaries against incumbents have faded, and it’s certainly top of mind for younger challengers who don’t want to hurt their future prospects within the party. Yet there’s something else at work now that was lacking when Reagan and Brown mounted their challenges. Today’s intense polarization and the contempt the two parties have for one another has fostered an internal cohesion within the two coalitions that, far more than ideological unity, acts as a retardant against insurgencies...."

From "Newsom Told the White House He Won’t Challenge Biden/The would-be pursuer of Trump and DeSantis is 'all in' for the president’s reelection and willing to wait his turn" (Politico).

WaPo columnist Dana Milbank "recently bought a property in the Virginia Piedmont, with the pandemic-inspired idea of finding peace in nature."

"On paper, the parcel is three-quarters wooded, one-quarter pasture. In practice, the place is about 95 percent brush... an entire civilization of invasive vines and weeds.... Asiatic bittersweet and porcelain berry, kudzu and Japanese honeysuckle, invasive wineberry and aggressive Canada goldenrod had devoured the place, turning forest and field alike into tangled masses of vines and thorns, and murdering defenseless native trees by strangulation and theft of sunlight... [A]ny attempt to remove the invaders by mechanical means alone (or by planting more native species — which will be the topic of a future column) is doomed; the interlopers would grow back faster than I could cut them out or replace them. The only chance of victory... is with a laborious, multiyear course of herbicides applied to each invasive plant.... Clearly, I won’t be defeating these invaders. At best, I’ll battle them... holding them at bay until I lose the will to fight them...."

From "I’m losing the battle against the brush. I’m not alone." 

He tells us the place is 95% brush but not how big it is. Why did he buy land that had problems he didn't understand at all and that make the place entirely unsuitable for its intended purpose (finding peace)? And more importantly, why does a person with this level of practical sense and good judgment have a column in The Washington Post expounding on politics? Can we take his inane real estate venture as a metaphor?

"Although Cambodia to this day has no law specifically limiting surrogacy, the government criminalized the practice by using existing laws against human trafficking..."

"... an offense that can carry a 20-year sentence. Dozens of surrogates have been arrested, accused of trafficking the babies they birthed. In a poor country long used as a playground by foreign predators — pedophiles, sex tourists, factory bosses, antique smugglers and, yes, human traffickers — the Cambodian authorities said they were on the lookout for exploitation....  Nearly all of those arrested in the 2018 raid gave birth while imprisoned in a military hospital, some chained to their beds. They, along with several surrogacy agency employees, were convicted of trafficking the babies. Their sentencings, two years later, came with a condition: In exchange for suspended prison terms, the surrogates would have to raise the children themselves. If the women secretly tried to deliver the children to the intended parents, the judge warned, they would be sent to prison for many years. This means that women whose financial precarity led them to surrogacy are now struggling with one more mouth to feed."

From "They Were Surrogates. Now They Must Raise the Children. In Cambodia’s weak legal system, surrogacy exists in a gray market, endangering all involved when political conditions suddenly shift and criminal charges follow" (NYT).

In one example discussed in the article, the surrogate was paid "$9,000 — about five times her annual base salary." 

"Actually, if you google the word senicide you’ll see that many parts of the world have a push/pull relationship with their older members..."

"... the push of veneration, the pull of elimination. The United States with its chrome-plated dreams of spit-shine modernity was never much for the admiration of its senior citizens. Way before taunts of 'Okay, boomer' and the calling of people with experience the pejorative term 'olds' this country has had a tendency to isolate the grizzled dotard, if not on an ice floe then in retirement camps where they could gum pudding and play bingo away from the delicate eyes of youth. It would be easy to blame the sixties, with silly slogans like 'Don’t trust anyone over thirty' or even sillier movies like Wild in the Streets, where anyone over thirty-five is herded in camps and given mandatory doses of LSD."

So writes Bob Dylan, in "The Philosophy of Modern Song."

So, of course, I google "senicide," and I'm reading this Wikipedia article "Senicide," while picturing 81-year-old Bob Dylan reading it too. Highlights:

"When your founder spends almost $40 million on politics, is that not necessarily out of excitement to do good and be regulated appropriately?"

"... Is this very good, invisible, costly fabric that I was also given to have made into the finest robes to show my commitment to effective altruism … nothing? Is it nothing? Please tell me if it’s nothing."

Writes Alexandra Petri in "Come to think of it, maybe I don’t understand cryptocurrency" (WaPo).

"The Commerce Department, under Ms. Raimondo’s leadership, is now poised to begin distributing nearly $100 billion — roughly 10 times the department’s annual budget..."

"... to build up the U.S. chip industry and expand broadband access throughout the country.... Many view the effort as the best — and only — bet for the United States to position itself in industries of the future, like artificial intelligence and supercomputing, and ensure that the country has a secure supply of the chips necessary for national security. But the risks are similarly huge. Critics of the Biden administration’s plans have noted that the federal government may not be the best judge of which technologies to back.... The outcome could also have ramifications for Ms. Raimondo’s political ambitions.... Her supporters say she could ascend to another cabinet position, run for the Senate or perhaps mount a presidential bid. But she is under close watch by Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and some other left-wing Democrats, who have criticized her as being too solicitous of corporate interests...."

From "A Rising Star in the Biden Administration Faces a $100 Billion Test/Gina Raimondo, the commerce secretary, has made a career of tackling increasingly larger challenges. Could the next one be too big?" (NYT).

"The two largest placebo-controlled trials of microdosing... both suggest that the benefits people experience are from the placebo effect."

"In the studies, volunteers... received either active doses or a placebo packaged in identical capsules. At the end of several weeks, almost everyone’s mood and well-being had improved, regardless of what they had taken.... If they took a placebo but thought it was a microdose, they felt better, and if they had an active dose but wrongly guessed it was a placebo, they did not. A third placebo-controlled trial... tried to get around user expectations by giving participants four microdoses of LSD over the course of two weeks, but without telling them about the purpose of the study or even what they were taking. Once again, there was no difference between the LSD and placebo groups."

From "More People Are Microdosing for Mental Health. But Does It Work? Scientists are split over whether the benefits some microdosers experience are a placebo effect or something more" (NYT).

"Scientists are split" because there are still some researchers who want to keep researching. Maybe a better-designed study could eliminate the placebo effect? Or are they mostly thinking the placebo effect helps people and it's good to help people?

"Even taking at face value Mr. Trump’s protestation that he knew nothing of [Nick] Fuentes, the apparent ease with which Mr. Fuentes arrived at the home of [the] former president..."

"... underscores the undisciplined, uncontrolled nature of Mr. Trump’s post-presidency just 10 days into his third campaign for the White House. A handful of Republicans, including at least one close ally of Mr. Trump’s, castigated him over meeting both Mr. Fuentes and Mr. West.... Mr. Fuentes... is best known for running a white nationalist youth organization known as America First, whose adherents call themselves groypers or the Groyper Army. In the wake of Mr. Trump’s defeat in 2020, Mr. Fuentes and the groypers were involved in a series of public events supporting the former president. At a so-called 'Stop the Steal' rally in Washington in November 2020, Mr. Fuentes urged his followers to 'storm every state capitol until Jan. 20, 2021, until President Trump is inaugurated for four more years.'... On Jan. 6, 2021, Mr. Fuentes led a large group of groypers to the Capitol where they rallied outside in support of Mr. Trump. The next day, Mr. Fuentes wrote on Twitter that the assault on the Capitol was 'awesome and I’m not going to pretend it wasn’t.'"

Writes Maggie Haberman, in "Trump’s Latest Dinner Guest: Nick Fuentes, White Supremacist/The former president’s table for four at Mar-a-Lago on Tuesday also included Kanye West, whose antisemitic statements have made him an entertainment-industry outcast" (NYT).

Haberman never explains the term "groypers," which I don't remember seeing before. There's a Wikipedia article "Groypers":

I misunderstood almond milk.

I've been drinking whole milk — cow's milk — in my coffee for many years, but I wanted to go milk-free for 3 weeks just to test myself — on the off-chance that it has something to do with my loss of smell. Yesterday — Day 1 — I just had black coffee, which is fine.

But then I bought some almond milk. Today — Day 2 — I put almond milk in my coffee. Well! That's no substitute for whole milk! It looks as though I put skim milk in my coffee. Don't ask me how it tastes. I don't have a proper sense of taste. It's a look and a feeling I want. For that, almond milk is useless.

Annoying words on the label: "unrivaled creaminess." 

I guess that means unrivaled by other brands of almond milk.

Elon Musk consults the people: "What do you think of the culture war?"

What do you think of the culture war?

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 25, 2022

Fixed pic.twitter.com/ZCKmGF0yPs

— InConjunctionWithTheCabal (@ICWTheCabal) November 25, 2022

Sunrise — 7:10.

The University of Wisconsin marching band plays the "Star-Spangled Banner" today, at 4:45, on the practice field by Lake Mendota.

 

Video by Meade.

"Seriously, you are the first person who seems to have noticed the sexual framework from intromission to last spasm," wrote Stanley Kubrick...

... to LeGrace Benson, a Cornell art history professor, who had written him a letter in 1964 detailing her observations about "Dr. Strangelove."

Now, Benson, who is 92, is interviewed in "My Coffee With Stanley Kubrick" (NY Magazine).

"There are various theories purporting to explain Musk’s hard right turn: a childhood in apartheid South Africa, his connection with Peter Thiel, disappointments in his personal life."

"Whatever the truth of the matter, whatever right-leaning tendencies he may have had before a couple years ago appear to have been latent or unformed. Now the transformation is almost complete. He’s done with general 'free speech' grievance and springing for alternative viewpoints. He’s routinely pushing all the far right storylines from woke groomers to great replacement. One particularly notable hint about the future came in a fractious interaction on Wednesday when Musk rolled out his own antic Dolchstoßlegende manque. In exchange about advertiser departures and alleged media bias, Musk claimed that he had cut a with [sic] civil rights groups to create a 'moderation council' but that they had broken the deal. Perhaps needless to say, this did not happen. The reference is to a chaotic meeting Musk held with a group of leaders of prominent civil rights groups, including the NAACP and the ADL, on November 2nd. Musk actually announced the 'moderation council' days earlier. We’re hardly four weeks into the Elon era on Twitter and he’s already cueing up a storyline in which he tried to placate the Blacks and the Jews and the gays but they betrayed him and set out to 'kill Twitter.' Not pretty...."

Writes Josh Marshall in "Elon Musk and the Narcissism/Radicalization Maelstrom" (TPM).

I'm not vouching for any of that, and it doesn't reflect my opinion of what Musk is doing with Twitter. I just think it's an important viewpoint that ought to be out in the sunlight.

By the way, who first said "Sunlight is the best disinfectant"? Was it Justice Brandeis?

Here's Quote Investigator:

"Kanye West very much wanted to visit Mar-a-Lago. Our dinner meeting was intended to be Kanye and me only, but he arrived with a guest whom I had never met and knew nothing about."

Said Donald Trump, quoted in an update to a Breitbart article that is now titled "Trump Dined at Mar-a-Lago with White Nationalist, Holocaust Denier Nick Fuentes Alongside Kanye West; UPDATE – Trump Responds, ‘Had Never Met and Knew Nothing About’ Fuentes."

I can't believe Trump doesn't control who has access to him! Either he's lying or he's reckless.  

I guess Ye sets his own terms and Trump makes a calculated decision to accept (and maybe he doesn't mind signaling that he's doesn't categorically reject white nationalists). Here's how Ye presents it:

#YE24 pic.twitter.com/DyIhMU5By6

— ye (@kanyewest) November 25, 2022